I VESCOVI ITALIANI E I DIRITTI UMANI IN BRASILE NEI PRIMI ANNI SETTANTA

Our essay looks into the rich correspondence between the Catholic journalist Ettore Masina and seventy-eight Italian bishops from May 1973 to February 1974. Masina requested them to sign an appeal for the promotion of the “Russell Tribunal II” against the use of torture in Brazil and other Latin American countries. There were few positive answers, but the analysis of the negative ones suggests a subdivision into three macro-groups corresponding to as many queries: is it appropriate to condemn the use of torture in Brazil, when the same phenomenon occurred in other countries as well? What is the relevance of a denunciation by a single bish-op, not collegially expressed? What would the many Italian missionaries in Brazil have risked by reason of a political denunciation in this respect? Our reflections, raised by such questions, allow us to penetrate the mentality of an episcopate that was trying to renew itself along the lines of the Second Vatican Council and Paul VI’s reforms.